Thursday, 30 January 2014

It's time for our next contest! For all of you who fancy yourselves poets (and even those of you who do not) this is the perfect contest for you. There are only a few rules (subject to change without notice as usual) and you can really let your creative juices flow here.

There is no limit to how long your poem can be, but I would like to see at least three lines. Your poem can rhyme, or not. It must have a "Valentine" theme of some sort. Pretend you are writing this for your sweetheart or lost love.

Make it sappy, make it sweet!

Dazzle me!

Knock me off of my feet!

(get it?)

Good luck you Dicers! Prizes to be announced sometime before winners are chosen. Oh, yah, and please email me your poems before Noon UTC February 14th! :)

Thank you, Thank you!

Judging is going to be done by a third party who shall remain anonymous.

There was once a time where the chat of Doge-Dice was not overflowing with rains. It was not punctuated by the call of !rainman. These were the dark days, and unknowing to the users of Doge-Dice... This time was coming to an end.

x was once just a typical user at Doge-Dice. He would come online and bet his doges just like the rest of us, he would talk in the chat and chastise beggars just like us.

That is, until the day he became something... very different.

x was walking home from work when the clear sky above him suddenly changed, dark clouds swirled and mixed into the blue above him as the wind picked up against his face. He felt the beginnings of some light drizzle splashing against his cheek. Pulling his hood up over his face he hurried down the main street as quickly as he could.

Suddenly a sharp bright light burned into his eyes as a fork of lightning struck the ground in front of him, moments later a deafening explosion threatened to burst his ear drums. He jumped, panicked and ran for cover underneath the awning of the local butcher shop as the rain the rain turned torrential. Little did he know that fate had brought this rain to the right man.

Just as he was about to step under the awning, another streak of lightning hit the ground at his feet and he felt a stinging sensation rip through his legs. He looked down and realised he had stepped into a puddle just as the lightning hit it. The last thing he saw as he fell to the ground was the rain coming down, pouring over his face.

He woke up in an familar feeling place, sitting at a pristine white desk on a pristine white chair. The walls were marked with the image of a Shiba Inu, on a golden coin with the words "wow much coin how money so crypto plz mine v rich very currency" in a repeated pattern.

He noticed a wooden door on the wall in front of him, strange he hadn't noticed it before. The door handle began to turn and swing open. Standing in front of him were two beings. Their flesh seemed to emanate a soft golden glow. Their movements seemed synchronized as they opened their mouths together and started chanting "Rainman.Rainman.Rainman.Rainman". X blacked out again.

When x woke he knew his purpose. He was in his bedroom again but he knew what he must do. He knew the powers that had been given to him. He feverishly turned on his computer, logged into Doge-Dice and cast himself into the merciless depths of the chat. He forced his mind to leave his body and become absorbed by the screaming unrelenting mass of perversion happening at the time.

He gave himself fully, and knew what he must do. He felt the strength of his new gift burning inside him, he felt it filling him. He knew he could wreak havoc, he knew he could bring the world to it's knees with a flick of his wrist but he also knew doge, he knew love.. Not just love, but such love. Wow. Very love.

He opened his arms to the chat, and welcomed donations. He used these donations to keep his power in check, as a focus point to increase his power. He grew, slightly at first but his tendrils ran deeper and deeper over time. Eventually he became integrated, he became the chat. He turned the rain against itself, he would bring peace and love with the force that almost took him.

He was not x any more, he was RainMan. And he had only one thing to say...

(13) <x> ● It begins to rain! You have 20 seconds to submit your addresses to share 2586.56300259 coins. ●

By DogeMasterChamp

Thank you DMC for this great story! Sorry I didn't get the illustration done in time! :P

If you'd like to tip DMC feel free to do so here:

Address DMasteerSy147t7Fzx4G7M5YTLWGz6vgaC

MasterP kindly wrote this for me. He said his English isn't great so I should change it, but I think it's fun to read just the way he wrote it. I did correct a couple of spelling errors, but left the rest. Thanks MasterP.I named the winning pieces. Hopefully the artists won't mind!One Million Doge Drawing contest Winners.

Just-dice and Doge-dice Drawing contest is over, Deb have chosen the winners with over 24 drawings on the Album of Drawings, some of the draws were the same draw in several stages of the drawing process. that give us a total amount of 18 unique drawings, i think that it have been artistic and no an easy task to Deb to take a decision about the winners, people put all kind of imagination skills in this contest and i'm sure that a lot of people laughing a lot with some draws.

At the beginning i thought that lots of users going submit tons of stick people drawing because they told that they are not good at drawing but here you can see user that are able to be hired by a comic book company or be the next Andy Warhol And Now the winners!

Here are some quotes from an e-mail Klye sent. us. I have permission to post this on the blog for those who are interested.

I royally fucked up last night and degen'd my rent/food/life BTC away.

I have a warrant out for my arrest.. And now that I have no rent for this month I think the best thing I can probably do is turn myself in and gocserve the rest of the winter in jail so I don't end up frozen to death in a snow bank somewhere.

My future is very uncertain at this time and I am not sure how much I amgoing to be around. If I am incarcerated all winter that is probably forthe best. I need to start dealing with my shit and living like a normalperson. My life choices are horrible and I need to get sorted out before Iend up dead somewhere. :/

I hope that Klye does make some changes in his life, gets some help, and gains some focus. Difficult though it is, I hope that he spends less time on the site, and more time looking after himself. If you'd like to tip, here is an address where you may do so.

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Just-Dice is experiencing some technical difficulties. Doog is on it, but please come join us at Doge-Dice chat for timely updates.

Thanks for your patience!

--

dooglus here. I figure this is as good a place as any to write about the issue. Times are PST.

Jan 28th

Around noon: I migrated the site to bigger better hardware in an attempt to reduce the lag that players had been complaining about. It appeared to have solved the problem. The site was still running great when I went to sleep around midnight.

Jan 29th

7:55am: I awoke to find that the site had gone down which I was sleeping. I checked with the web host and sure enough the server wasn't responding. I tried shutting it down using the admin interface, but it wouldn't stop running.

8:17am: I opened a support ticket with the web host asking them to look at it and tell me what's going on. They replied and said they'd look into it.

8:45am: They replied again saying they're aware of the problem and need to migrate away from a particular piece of hardware. That the problem is their end. That they'll take care of what needs doing. I asked how long it will take. They said "no longer than 24 or 48 hours but usually much less". I made it clear that this was urgent and they said they'll do what they can and reply again when they know more.

9:29am: They got back to me saying everything was OK now and that I should restart the server. I'll try that, do some testing on it, and if it's OK make it available to the public.

Saturday, 25 January 2014

So, here are the drawings I have. Some people may have linked doog or I to their drawings on imgur and not emailed them to me. If your drawing/s aren't in that album, please email me and I'll be sure to get them up.

Now for a not-so-happy story. Thanks KOS for being so candid here. I am glad you are working on your issues and wish you the best of luck.

Hello everyone. I was asked by Dooglus and Deb of Just-Dice if I would be willing to share my story to possibly help others who have the issues I have. Before I begin, let me just be clear. I am a gambling addict. But I haven't placed a bet in over 30 days since leaving rehab and I have no urge to.Around the time I was 15 years old, a couple friends of mine invited me to playing poker on Pokerstars with them. We lied about our age and got a weekly tournament going. Easily cash out and with no issue we played our game. I started to want to play more, those ambitions of playing in the Sunday million and winning it all really was always my goal. Always playing the satellites to make it into the bigger tournaments. I lost about $1000, half of my savings at the time. I stopped gambling for a month or two cause I never did have a true or large cashout.Then came the superbowl between the Patriots and the Giants. I really thought the Giants would win so I put $100 on whatever +100 Giants moneyline was. Well it won and it all began from there. I turned $2000 into $16,000 over the course of the next 2-3 years. I did this solely through a cash sportsbook known as Heritage. I never played in the casinos cause I thought they were rigged. It felt amazing winning and always having money to buy things.In the beginning of the year 2013, I first discovered bitcoins. And it truly was an incredible discovery at first. I immediately fell in love with the currency and all the people in the community I met. I first created my account “KingofSports” on sealswithclubs, the bitcoin poker site, and began buying and selling decent amounts of bitcoin through the poker chat room. I never played poker, I just chatted cause the people were so friendly. I soon became one of the largest buyers of coin and also a large seller too. At this point I was gambling heavily on sports as usual, the big swings here and there, up $1000 one week down $1000 the next. No big deal, I was used to it. Then came the provably fair casinos. Dice in particular. I decided one day after a loss to try out the new site Primedice when it was released. Someone had turned 2 BTC into 200 BTC so why not give it a shot. Well it all went downhill from there. Everytime I lost a huge bet in sports or a major upset cost me the win, I’d turn to dice sites like PrimeDice, Coinroll.it and Just-Dice. Cause hey, you lost $50, you can easily win that back with $500 starting right? Wrong. Let me share two of my most memorable dice experiences with you.It was a day in June I believe, maybe early July. I had sold all my BTC and lost the bit I had left. I had about $14,000 in the bank. Down $2,500 from my highest point early May. I decided to buy $1000 worth of BTC and met a user on bitcointalk willing to trade their 9.9 BTC for my $1000. The fact that I couldn’t have an even 10 BTC bothered me. I drove 20 minutes to bank, deposited the cash and got my BTC. I got home and said “Lets get that 0.1 from PrimeDice just to be at an even 10. I bet 0.1 at 49.5%, lost. Doubled to 0.2 lost. Doubled to 0.4, lost. 0.8, lost. 1.6, lost. And then 2 BTC at a time til what do you know it gone. 9.9 BTC gone in less than 5 minutes. I was shaking, crying too. I emailed PrimeDice and said they were a rigged casino and begged them for my money back. Didn’t get it which was understandable, I had lost. I ended trying to drink myself to death a couple days later and ended up in the Psych ward. I stopped for about a week after I got out but quickly went back to my usual isolation spot of my room to gamble or look up sports stats 24/7. Similar stories of having multiple BTC, going for only 0.1 or less and losing it all happened. Everytime it killed me inside.Then came the night in early August that I will never forget. Ever. Along with gambling, I had gotten into taking MDMA, also known as E. I never was addicted but I’d take it and always gamble heavily when on it. That night I took mdma and had about 6-8 BTC to my name. The site I always considered myself lucky on was coinroll.it. I deposited all of my BTC there. Betting 1 BTC at under 32400 (49.5% chance of winning, 2x the prize) I slowly made it to 16 BTC. Wow I thought I keep winning. Started betting 2 and 3 BTC until what do you know it I’m at 75 BTC. Its about 2am and I freak out in major happiness. I tried cashing out that 75 BTC. Hot wallet empty/cannot fulfill amount it tells me. I keep going and made it to 78 BTC. Then it all went downhill. Losing happened and up 50 BTC I start crying. I can’t stop pressing the roll button. Before I know I’m at a balance of 0. If I had quit I’d have sold those coins and have been at $20,000 in the bank or more. But I didn’t. And it didn’t stop there either. In the morning, feeling completely depressed and hopeless I insta-purchased 50 BTC from Coinbase. I deposited 35 BTC and bet 5 BTC at a time 49.5% on Just-Dice. I said if I reach 50 BTC I stop. I reached 0 BTC before I reached 50. 7 losses before 3 wins. At this point, I deposited the 15 BTC I had left of the 50 BTC into Bitbook. I bet it on the Orioles that day and they lost bigtime to the Red Sox. Now sitting on $7000 in my bank account after this night. When I could have been at $20,000+. About two weeks later I started my sophomore year at college. I was determined to stop gambling. Instead of gambling consuming my life, I met someone that I eventually fell in love with. She to this day is my biggest support and was my biggest motivation to quit. On days that I felt depressed or alone though I gambled big, and I quickly realized I needed to stop being able to buy BTC. I deleted coinbase but I still was able to buy BTC cause of my amazing reputation. I took a loan from BigBitz one day cause my 2 BTC deposit hadn’t processed yet and I wanted to place a specific bet that was about to begin. That bet lost. Later when the night came, I wanted to send Bitz his 2 BTC back with the 0.01 interest we agreed on. Martingaling on casinobitco.in I never was able to reach that 2.01. In anger and in embarrassment I ran from bitcointalk and stopped communication with everyone. The value of those coins was $200-$250, and I intend to pay BigBitz that amount back in USD plus 10% interest by the end of this coming summer. I still continued to gamble, but this time it was more in hiding. I went from $7000 to $2000 and finally stopped for awhile. Me and my girl broke up and I relapsed so heavily I woke up the next morning with $500 to my name. I immediately called my best friend and asked for him to help get me to rehab. I made all the calls I needed and drove 5 hours to a place in Virginia called Williamsville Wellness. It was the best decision of my life. It truly changed me and I truly have no urge to gamble whatsoever. They showed us about our addiction, we got so much individual therapy it was incredible. What I urge everyone who thinks they might have a gambling problem is to not believe there is no hope. I go to Gambler’s Anonymous once a week and am in the process of getting a long term sponsor. I talk to those people every week and share my story. I am 19 years old, I have never stepped into a casino in real life but can say 100% I am a compulsive gambler. I am an addict. But one thing I have going for me right now is my friends and family, my dedication to stopping and the wonderful feeling that I truly have no urge to gamble anymore. The thought of gambling disgusts me. For anyone reading this who can’t stop, get help. The moment I stepped into rehab I told everyone I have a gambling problem and want it gone. The day I left rehab all the doctors told me they had never seen someone so determined to lose the addiction from the moment they stepped in the building. I told my friends this and its true. Gambling was like that girl you date, who you fall in love with but after awhile shows her true colors. She abuses you everyday and controls you. But you love her so you stay with her. Well that bitch is gone from my life and I’m thankful every day for that. Every day is a new day, take it one day at a time. Its been over 30 days for me. For me this is the start of a better life for me and I’m truly happy for the first time in over 4 years. Almost broke, but happy.I am still all for bitcoin and I want it to succeed. I have nothing against the casinos, investors, players or whoever. I will continue to hopefully be a contributing part of this bitcointalk community as I used to be with all the large escrows I handled, but I wanted to share my story for anyone else out there who is struggling with any sort of addiction. Please know you are NOT alone and there is help. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem and seeking help.

As per most posts that are submitted, I ask the writer for a deposit address so that if our readers wish to tip they may do so.
If you would like to tip KOS here is an address 18pRUKLEDbeNaLX6odTaXqYdY2H4SaiQyr

I've been receiving stories, both happy and sad, that are blog worthy. I will start with a happy one just for fun! :) Thanks "Erin" for this.

How Just Dice Paid for My Books

At the request of Deb from JustDice.com, I decided to write about my story with JustDice over the last few months. I will apologize in advance for what will be a pretty lengthy blog post.

The best place to start would probably be with introductions and background to my situation with Just Dice. My name is Patrick and I am a sophomore in college in the United States. Before I decided to attend college, my parents recognized that I would need to learn the value of financial independence before entering "the real world." Since I also have a sister who is rapidly approaching college age, my parents decided to strike a deal with me to both help the family financially and teach me a little bit about financial independence: they decided to pay for whatever of my tuition + room/board wasn't covered by scholarships if I would pay for supplies, books, and food. I figured I could cover the meals with money that I made working a minimum wage job as a shipping boy back home, but the exorbitant cost of books left my budget pretty deep in the red. While my parents decided to float me the difference in books for my first year in college, they absolutely refused to cover them for the second year, forcing me to find some way to make the money up.

Entering the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I drove home to live with my parents and come up with a way to get extra money for the books this coming semester. My shipping job wouldn't pay me above what I was already making, nor give me extra hours beyond what I was working. I had no considerable assets to sell off for book money, and even that wouldn't cover books in the long term. I couldn't torrent most of the books since most of them were written by university professors who had limited publication and hadn't been seeded. I considered taking out a small loan in order to cover the books, but given my youth and anecdotal evidence I've received from my friends about the predatory loans they've taken out, I decided to against it. The semester was rapidly approaching and I needed a way out (and yes, selling illicit substances was out of the question).

Enter bitcoin. I learned about the concept back in the fall 2012, but didn't eventually buy any until the summer of 2013 after the April spike. I toyed around with bitcoin speculation, putting in $25 dollars or so in July, but didn't make much beyond an extra twenty dollars or so by August or so. The process was going too slowly. Reading various bitcoin forums, I stumbled upon JustDice. Now, I'm not too experienced a gambler (having only gambled a few dollars at a Catholic school carnival game in high school) and nobody in my family had a history of gambling, but I did know my way around statistics and a 1% house edge seemed reasonable (from what I had read).

In September, a few weeks before school started, I made the plunge. I put about $50 into bitcoin to gamble with in JustDice. Like many first-time gamblers, it went about as smoothly as expected: lost everything in just under 50 rolls. Crushed, I decided to step away from JustDice and figure something out. A month later, I'm in school and it's nearing crunch time for supply purchases and I hadn't made much money above what I had for food. I went back to the bitcoin forums and researched gambling strategies and techniques: I was going to strike back into JD. I learned about martingale, watched videos, learned about whales like Nakowa and dreamt of making hundreds of thousands like he did. I reinvested in bitcoin, bigger this time: $168.44 (I still remember that initial purchase). I began to play. I played cautiously, betting 2% of my invested money and martingaling from there at 49% or so.

The money began to rack up. Soon I had made twenty dollars, twenty whole dollars, which was a good few hours at work at my job. Damn, I could buy a nice meal at a restaurant with that! But I remembered my mission. I worked up to $30 and called it quits because the nerves were getting to me; what if I lost everything? I needed to step back for a bit. I relished in my winnings, but needed more. I sold the thirty dollar difference to buy an international relations book I needed for a quiz that month. I decided to keep going and the money kept trickling in, dollars at a time.

My gambling strategy was working and I managed to cover (barely) my essential books for the fall semester. Around December, I told my parents I made the extra money selling old clothing and novels I had lying around my dorm (of which I had none). During winter break, I discovered LiKaShing, the famous JD whale. He discussed his gambling strategy of waiting with low bets until the likelihood of a number above 95% or below 5% was likely to come up and bet larger with a higher profit margin. I was skeptical (the Gambler's Fallacy was nagging in the back of my head), but his massive profits didn't lie. I tried my hand at the LiKa strategy. I reinvested: 100 dollars this time, and went to work.

Waiting. Patiently waiting. Roll after roll of "0 BTC" bets, waiting for the magic numbers to feel close. Then: profit. Dropped in about 1% of my winnings on a bet and it paid off 20 fold (19.8, but close enough). Then the waiting began again, a fisherman waiting with dozens of empty bites. This cycle continued through winter break, I waited for my parents to leave the house before booting up JD. I got active on the chat boards, talking to others who were bitten by that same gambling bug, dreaming to one day make enough to "rain" on a few people. I would continuously bet, nothing too aggressive. If I lost a great deal, I would change account so the profit numbers wouldn't psych me out and make me chase profits. As of today, January 24th, my numbers were called: I had made over $400 dollars between mid-December and today, enough to cover my books for the semester and a little bit of extra money to buy a delicious $15 food buffet at the local fast food joint.

But I kept going. I put .1 in and lost it all. I was angry at myself, pissed that I couldn't just keep what I had. I made the classic gambler's mistake and chased my losses: I put more into JD to see if I could win it back. Lucky for me, I nailed it: lucky number above 95% while I hit the high button. I made back by .1 with interest!

But I wanted more. I sat for a while today as the dreams kept nagging: could you get to $500? 600? Hell, even $1000? Patrick, could you cover this semester's tuition? I remembered chats that I had over the last few months: "I was up to 3 bitcoins from a .1 investment and lost it!", "I'm chasing -2.5 profit margin", "LiKaShing just lost 100 or so bitcoins today, what a rough stretch!" I wouldn't be one of them, but it was hard to turn down the extra profit. I couldn't pull the trigger; I had to get out. The best gamblers knew when to hold em and knew when to fold em. The BTC is still sitting in a wallet, waiting to be cashed. A ticket. A golden goddamn ticket for my books. I remembered all JD meant to me over the last few months: soaring wins, heart-wrenching losses, and a sense of comraderie with others trying to make it big. The movie Rounders said it best: the best poker pros don't remember the big wins, only the slap-across-the-face losses. So I pulled out and decided to retire before the inevitable slap. I don't know how I'm covering next semester's books or how to replace the adrenaline rush I got from JD, but I'll find a way. For now, that answer won't be JustDice.

If you enjoyed my story and want to send a tip, my address is: 1Aj36gH4zCKRwNx15nSUB6m88Xw5J8Pfwr

Thanks so much for this story. I say all dicers chip in a tiny bit and get this boys books paid for!

Tuesday, 21 January 2014

I am writing this in desperate hopes of reaching some of the current (and future) players who lose and wish to have their losses refunded. I expect that what I will end up doing is preaching to the choir, but hey, it's worth a shot.

So, since the site launched, we have been receiving a myriad of support tickets requesting, demanding, begging return of coins lost while playing. We have even received several with threats of various types if we don't refund their losses.

Lately this seems to be getting more frequent, perhaps in part due to the addition of the doge-coin site, and perhaps mostly due to the recent price rise of BTC. We have a VERY strict non-refund policy on both sites. I imagine that most people requesting refunds have no idea how much more is being requested on a daily basis. To them it seems just a small amount, but when added together, the number is significant.

Gamblers need to realize that first of all they are losing to the investors, not to us. Once their coin is lost, it has been split amongst all who have their coins invested. They also need to not play for more than they can afford to lose. If they are uncomfortable losing a certain amount of coin then they should not have it in their balance able to be played. If the coins are not in your balance you (or your baby, teen, or errant bot) can not accidentally bet them all in one go.

Our sites do everything they can to keep your coins safe. The cold storage is not accessible to anyone aside from dooglus, there are a minimal number of coins kept in the hot wallet, and there is the ability for you to set user names, passwords, and 2FA on your accounts. If you try to make a max bet there is a box that pops up warning you of this and making you click again to confirm. (If you choose to turn this warning off then you risk an accidental max bet.) We offer to block accounts from gambling so investors are less tempted, and we don't endorse bots for the simple reason that we can not be accountable for any losses that might occur using these tools.

The FAQ has a very clear statement regarding refunds, and still people continue to expect that they may be the exception to this policy.

If anyone has any thoughts on how we can be even more clear in this regard, please feel free to email me directly, submit a ticket, or comment on the blog. It's difficult to keep saying the same thing to people, and more difficult when they don't accept our response and either threaten us or continue to harass us with refund requests.

We are not heartless, we care about people's losses. Unless there is a site side issue, there will be